We have 3 sons, one was going to travel with us to China in August so we paid for the expedited processing for him, he is 12 years old. The other 2, 5 and 6, we did normal processing. In one week we received the non-expedited passports for the younger guys, the following day we received the expedited passport for the 12 year old. Total waste of money to expedite, actually took longer, still only 8 days though. We went through local post office in southern california.